Religion: Monastery

William Henry Cardinal O’Connell, Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston, never goes to the movies, rarely has films exhibited in his Commonwealth Avenue home, and on those infrequent occasions seldom applauds or sees a picture to its end. Last fortnight, however, Cardinal O’Connell beat palm on palm while sitting through a film brought to his house by George Kraska, manager of Boston’s highbrow Fine Arts Theatre, and Rev. Michael Joseph Ahern, S. J., one of New England’s ablest Jesuits. The picture was Monastery, a European religious documentary film, the better part of which was made by Robert Alexandre of Pathe Cinema de France, who directed Cloistered, first picture ever made in a convent (TIME, June 1, 1936). Dedicated to Cardinal O’Connell, with his express permission, Monas tery had its U. S. premiere at the Fine Arts Theatre last week, the $10-a-seat proceeds of $5,850 going towards a Father Ahern Fellowship in Seismology at Weston College outside Boston.

Part of Monastery, photographed by Jean Le Herissey and Jean Perine, deals with the life of St. Bernard monks in Switzerland. Most striking shot: the St.

Bernard mortuary, full during the winter of victims of accidents, to be identified and claimed by their relatives in the spring. The remainder of the solemn, slow-moving picture was filmed in the French monastery of La Trappe, to enter which Director Alexandre needed to employ as much wire-pulling and salesman ship as he did in making Cloistered. The Trappist monks, one of the strictest of Catholic orders, speak to one another only by signs, and permitted Director Alexandre no special staging, no retakes. A much better job of photography, the Trappist sequence of Monastery is more sombre than the St. Bernard, shows such Trappist activities as the monks washing one another’s feet, burying a black-robed brother without a coffin. One shot is of a Trappist motto: The bliss of dying without regret is well worth the pain of living without contentment. Fade-out of the film is a monk’s head superimposed upon a painting of Jesus Christ (see cut).

When Manager Kraska obtained the U. S. rights to Monastery, he invited his good friend Father Ahern to help him cut, revise and edit it, as well as deliver a dubbed-in commentary. For the jovial, baldish Jesuit, this was a congenial assignment. Father “Mike” Ahern, 60, is an accomplished Catholic publicist. Head of the departments of chemistry and geology at Weston College, New England Jesuit training college, he is also a teacher of philosophy, science and theology at Boston College, and, since 1929, speaker on Boston station WNAC’s “Catholic Truth Period.”